


A Visit from the Chef

by desperately_human



Category: Northern Exposure
Genre: Gen, Joel-centric, Magical Realism, Sweet, most people are only in this for a minute, semi-magical bears, structured like a fake episode I hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:07:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28143621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desperately_human/pseuds/desperately_human
Summary: Joel wakes one morning to find that a family of bears have broken into his house and are eating his food. He responds to this, badly at first, and then better.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 16
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	A Visit from the Chef

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/gifts).



> Dearest fic recipient, I loved all of your prompts, but I learned that my mother's friend had gone into his kitchen one day only to find that a mother black bear and two cubs were sitting by the counter eating all of his chocolate and oranges. This was a setup straight out of a Northern Exposure episode and I couldn't help but think about these bears and write their story.

_The Brick was decked out with white linen tablecloths, and Shelly was cutting velvet-red roses and arranging them in mason jars to set on the tables. It was warm, warm enough that when a tuxedoed waiter Joel didn’t recognize offered to take Joel’s coat, he let it slip easily off his shoulders. Glancing down, he realized he was wearing the wool suit he had bought for his cousin’s wedding in Long Island, where he had scorched the left cuff when he leaned forward to flirt with the bride’s sister and put his arm directly into the guttering candle set in the middle of the table, and hadn’t noticed until people started giggling. The cuff looked fine now. He shrugged, and looked up to find the table was suddenly full of people. Maggie in a red cable-knit sweater, Ruth-Anne in a blue, knee-length dress with a lace collar, Marilyn wrapped an azure blue scarf that she was somehow simultaneously wearing and knitting, Maurice in his uniform, perfectly pressed, and Holling in the suit he had work for his almost-wedding. Shelly had joined them, now swathed in blue taffeta with her hair fluffed up into a halo around her head, Ed wore a soft grey suit that reminded Joel of Cary Grant in thirties films, and Chris, unexpectedly, wore a tuxedo and white tie. The table grew and grew as each person sat down, and waited brought steaming plates of almond crusted trout, of beet and ricotta salad, of blueberry cheesecake and melting chocolate lava cake, and set them down before each person. Joel inhaled deeply, smelling spices and flavors he hadn’t tasted since he left New York._

_As he lifted his fork and knife, preparing to dive into the luxurious meal, he was stopped by a menacing growl from behind him. He froze, breath caught in his throat, then turned slowly. Just over his left shoulder stood a black near, towering over his chair as it stood on its hind legs, sniffing the air. “Whoa now,” Joel said “I know that rules are different here in the, in the arctic, but seriously? There must be some sort of health code that bans this sort of thing.” He looked around, but the waiters had all melted into the walls. His fellow diners started down at their plates, frozen. The bear growled again, low in its throat. “Okay,” Joel said, scooting his chair back away from the table, “okay, don’t get bent out of shape.” The bear took advantage of the space between Joel’s body and his plate to dive headfirst for his food. She ate in slobbering mouthfuls, and the sound of her chewing filled Joel’s head, gentle snuffling muffling the unmistakable snap of sharp teeth behind those pulled-back lips. The sounds mounted until—_

Joel shot awake, shaking with leftover adrenaline. He had thrown off at least one of his summer blankets (much the same as the winter blankets, although slightly fewer) and was shivering and sweaty in his bed. Something felt wrong, the way waking up in this bed had felt every morning for his first six months when he every nature sound, every shift of the ice or rattle of the wind, was new and threatening. He stared at the ceiling, letting himself slowly come back to consciousness, until he realized that the hungry, snuffling, munching sounds hadn’t stopped.

_It’s Ed stopping by to talk,_ he thought to himself, _or O’Connell to finally fix that heater. What have I said about knocking?”_ He grabbed a few medical journals he had brought home the night before and rolled them up, ready to wave threateningly in the face of his intruder, and hopped on each foot as he pulled on his unlaced boots. The sounds from the kitchen were even louder, now, pots being knocked about and what sounded like the fridge being opened. He set his teeth, took a deep breath to ready himself for an outraged monologue, and stepped through the door.

It was--he was still dreaming. This couldn’t, _couldn’t_ be right. It was the bear from the restaurant, glossy black fur now smeared with the chocolate bar she was eating in great chomps, leaning against the counter and a good deal taller than Joel on her hind legs. Around her feet gamboled two smaller bears, tussling over the mesh bag of oranges that Joel had special ordered in from Fairbanks, because August—even Alaska August, tinged with snow flurries--reminded him of his mother’s fresh-squeezed orange juice. As he watched, mouth hanging comically open, one of the cubs ripped the bag open with his claws and all three bears began devouring the oranges with abandon.

“Oh no,” Joel murdered to himself, dropping his useless roll of papers as he spun around and bolted out the door. “Oh no, no, no, no, no.” He slammed the door, heedless of the sound and the fact that he was still in pajamas, tripping over his unlaced boots and he scrambled into his truck and locked the doors. “No. no, no, no, not supposed to happen. Not---not okay.” His shaking hands made it hard to turn the key in the ignition, but he got the engine turned on, grateful that for once it revved to life without needed to warm up, and slammed his foot on the accelerator, teeth clicking together on every bounce as he muttered to himself, “no, no, nope, nope, nope” all the way into town.

Parking in front of The Brick, he pulled on a woolen sweater found under the passenger seat. He was still in his plaid pajama bottoms but, well, sometimes there were more important things. He pushed the door open with such force that it ricocheted off the wall and he had to step swiftly to the side to avoid being hit. He scanned the room, having decided on the way that while Alaska as a whole, and Maurice and Cicely in particular, were all to blame for this outrageous situation, one person was at the center of that blame.

“O’Connell!” Maggie lifted her head where she was sitting at the end of the bar, tucking into a plate of eggs and sausages. Joel strode over, ignoring her smirk at his PJ pants, and dropped down on the stool beside her. “there is,” he jerked the plate of breakfast foods away from her as she made to take another bite, “listen to me! There is…a bear. _Three_ bears in my cabin.”

“Three bears, huh?” Maggie barely looked up as stole her plate of eggs back, “let me guess, they’re eating your porridge and sleeping in your bed?”

“I--” Joel sputtered, regained his train of thought, “this might be a joke to you, and yes, _actually,_ they _are_ eating my food I will have you know, but as my landlord this is your responsibility. There are, there are laws about this stuff! Your…shoddy construction, or pest management, or _something_ , is putting my life in danger.”

“Come on, Fleishman,” Maggie rolled her eyes. “Look, I don’t know what you were drinking last night but clearly you’ve had some kind of messed up dream and…”

“Now hang on,” Holling had appeared on the other side of the bar, setting down a cup and pouring Joel some coffee, “Remember Sam Davis that one year. What was it, eighty-five? They reckoned a bear got into his house.”

“See,” Joel was briefly triumphant, before his brain processed the whole of the statement, “hang on, hang on a minute. What do you mean “they reckoned”?”

“Well, it was well past spring thaw by the time anyone got round to checking on him,” Holling said, mopping up drops of spilled coffee with a grayish rag, “and by that time the wolves and the insects had been at him, too. But the presiding thought was that the thing that actually killed him was a grizzly came into his cabin to get shelter form that big storm, and unfortunately Sam was there.”

Joel opened his mouth a few times, and, unable to find the right words to express his sentiments on _that_ situation, closed it again.

“He had this straw-filled wall thing,” Shelly broke in, “eco-friendly or something. But that bear ripped right through it. Hey, how did they get into your house, Doctor F?”

“Hold up,” Maggie snapped, “this is not the same situation. There is no way a grizzly could get inside that house. No, listen, I maintain _proper_ walls. The only way something could get in would be if _someone_ left the door unlocked or opened a window,” she continued, over the protest of the growing crown of listeners, “even then it would hardly be a grizzly. A little black bear maybe.”

“It was,” Joel waved his hand in a vague circular motion round his head, “They were _enormous_ black bears,” at the sign of disappointment that seemed to run through the room he objected, “Really big ones!” He lifted his hand above his head, trying to indicate the high of the mother bear, “well, one big one. And two, what do you call them, puppies. They knocked out the whole window.”

“There were cubs!” Shelly capped her hands, delighted, “oh aren’t they just precious? Don’t you just want to take them home and cuddle them.”

“They _are_ in my home,” Joel reminded her, grimacing, “and no, I most certainly do not. I want them _out!”_

“Black bears won’t eat you,” Marilyn put in, “A grizzly would have got you while you were asleep.” Joel let out a squeaky gasp and she shrugged, “Black bears are more interested in berries and rodents. Once they’ve eaten all your food, they should be gone.”

“See, Fleishman,” Maggie turned away as if the matter was closed, tucking back into her breakfast, “they’ll probably be gone by tonight. No problem”

“Yes, problem! Very big problem. O’Connell, Holling, Marilyn, these are wild creatures. They’re ferocious and untamable. They should not be _inside my house_ , they should not be _eating my chocolate_.”

“I doubt chocolate is good for bears,” Ruth-Anne slid into the seat next to Joel’s, having apparently picked up the whole story in her one-minute walk from the door to the counter, “I mean, its not good for dogs, is it? They could get sick.”

“Fine,” snapped Joel, lifting his arms in mock defeat, “fine. From now on my kitchen will only contain bear-safe foods. I’ll be sure to re-stock for next time they come back. What do you think they’d want? Raisins, rabbits, pumpernickel bread?”

“Some trail mix would probably be nice,” Ruth-Anne offered, “I think I have some in the shop.” Joel glared at her.

“I don’t know, Fleishman,” Maggie said, “don’t you think you’re taking this a little too hard. I mean, they probably won’t come back at all, right?”

“Oh, they’ll definitely come back,” said Holling, “once they’ve found a good spot to eat, they won’t just let it go.”

Joel found himself sputtering again, unable to form coherent arguments in the face of what he had come to think of a Cicely Group-Think Logic. Finally, he came back to his original plan, turning to Maggie again. “You. You’re my landlord. This is most definitely _your_ problem.”

“What do you want me to do, put out mouse traps?”

“You could put out a bears trap, I suppose,” Chris interjected from where he had wiggled behind the bar and popped up beside Shelly, “but that brings up the whole cruelty-to-animals deal. I mean, do you really want them chewing off their legs, freezing to death or dying from blood loss in your own kitchen, just for the sake of a few perishables?”

“Sounds to me,” Ed added, “like what you really need to do, Doctor Fleishman, is find a new place to stay until they’ve finished with your old cabin.” There was a round of nodding and noises of affirmation from the surrounding crowd.

Joel swallowed the rest of his coffee in one gulp, trying and failing to cover the grimace as the scalding liquid runed down his throat. “Fine.” He said, too tired and frustrated to continue the argument, “if you all are just ready to give into…into this barbarism, into putting our own needs below those of wild animals. Fine! I’ll deal with this myself.” He jumped off the stool, stumbled once as the free laces of his right boot got caught in the legs, and strode out of the bar with as much dignity as someone in pajama pants, who had been thrown out of his own home by a family of bears, could muster.

Over the next weeks, Joel slept on the examination table in his office. Occasionally Chris, or Holling, or even Maurice would bring over some spare clothes, until Joel’s everyday style became an eclectic mix of his friends’ least wanted outfits. Marilyn woke him far too early by switching on all the lights when she entered the office every morning, and more than once he rolled over in his sleep and found himself face-down on the cold office floor. But the worst, by far the worst part, were the dreams.

_Joel dreamed of a busy kitchen, of a mix of French and English shouted over his head, voices echoing off polished granite walls and steel countertops. He had an enormous pan in one hand and was expertly flipping sauteed mushrooms, their delicious aroma filling the air. “Where is my bed of wild rice in chicken stock?”_ _He shouted, and his voice came out deeper than usual, a menacing growl around the edge._

_Joel dreamed of sitting at a neatly laid table, of knowing which of the four forks to use for each course, and chatting with a man he knew to be the mayor. As a well-dressed waiter laid each course in front of them, he explained the nuances of every sauce and appetizer, with knowledge he had never consciously possessed, still in that low growl of a voice. The mayor laid his hands over his significant belly and sat back in his seat, sighing with contentment._

_He dreamed of a studio apartment, in a city that had skyscrapers but a different skyline than New York, of reading the morning newspaper the same day it came out and the gentle whirring of an expresso maker, the soft melting of fresh chocolate croissants in his mouth. He took a bite out of an orange, skin and all, felt the juice dripping down his chin and down his throat as well, sparks of flavor dancing across his tongue._

_He dreamed dizzily of the opera, drinking champagne and chatting with women in flowing ballgowns during the intermissions, of art exhibits featuring blank white canvases each marred with a single pencil line, of a subway train stuffed with people who all stepped aside in respect and perhaps fear as he entered, of the scrape of his claws on the metal handrail._

_He dreamed of the kitchen again, dreamed of it almost every night. He dreamed of the buzz of adrenaline, the excitement and anticipation. It was like the brief, frantic term he had spent working in the ER, terrifying but also thrilling in the thoughtlessness of it, that no moment existed outside of the one he was in, the people working together with as if they were one machine. In the dream, he was like the surgeon, his finger on the pulse of the whole kitchen, his awareness extended to every dish being made, every burnt finger hastily wrapped and put back to work. His mouth hummed with an array of spices he hadn’t tasted since he had left New York, his heart with the certainty that people were counting on him, that the people out there waiting for their food loved him, adored and respected him. His dessert chef handed him a quickly melting pyramid of chocolate, and he looked own and saw the small dessert grasped in his enormous, furry paw--_

Joel bolted upright with a yelp, and promptly fell off the examining table, bruising his already stiff and aching knees on the linoleum floor.

“Oh, you’re up,” Marilyn said from where she had been waiting outside the door. “good. Patient number one is here.” Patient number one turned out to be Ruth-Anne, who looked down at Joel with mild concern before apparently deciding the polite thing to do was to sit down in the chair opposite his desk and wait for him to compose himself. Joel pulled himself off the floor, critically eyed the sweatpants and the ratty NASA sweatshirt he was wearing, debated for a minute the relative merits of changing or not, and decided simply to get the appointment over with. He walked over to the desk with as much dignity as his aching legs would allow him, and sat down facing Ruth-Anne.

“Alight, so what’s the trouble bringing you here today?” he asked, re-arranging his pencils and trying to shake his dream-fogged brain awake.

“I’ve been…” Ruth-Anne paused, eying him critically, “well I came because I had been having some trouble with my shoulder but actually, it looks like _you_ might be the one who needs something right now.”

Joel shook his head and blocked her sympathy and inquiries as much as possible, examining her shoulder and eventually prescribing a mild painkiller. But when it was time for her to leave, he couldn’t help but give in to her gentle questioning. He explained about the dreams, how they left him exhausted and confused but also desperately homesick, not for New York exactly, but for this city he had never even seen and a job he had never held. To his great embarrassment, he found himself getting teary-eyed as he described the buzz, the intensity, the joy of the kitchen. Finally, chagrined in a different way, he explained about the growl in his voice and the fur on his hands, and how natural they felt in the dream. Ruth-Anne listened to it all, nodded sagely, and as she left said “There’s something I need to check at the store. I think perhaps I know what is happening to you.”

“Nothing’s _happening_!” Joel shouted after her, already embarrassed to have sent so long talking about ridiculous _dreams,_ “I just need to sleep in a real bed, in a house that isn’t infested by wild animals!”

As the dreams got more frequent, and the aches in Joel’s body got worse from sleeping on the exam table, as August slowly turned to September and the first now fell, Joel found himself struggling to concentrate on his patients, or indeed anything except his growing desire to sleep in his own bed and a parallel frustration that his house should have been taken over by wild creatures and no one seemed inclined to do a damn thing about it.

The next time he dropped in on the store to pick up his weekly essentials—fewer of them now that he couldn’t cook on his own and had every meal at the Brick, usually sullenly glaring down anyone who attempted to make conversation with his—Ruth-Anne called to him to stick around for a minute and disappeared into the basement where she kept the city archives. She returned with a slightly battered sheaf of newsprint from the _Montreal Gazette_ from four year back.

“We get all the major Canadian papers here” she explained in response to Joel’s furrowed eyebrows. “They show up a few months late but still, it’s necessary to archive out history, don’t you think?” Joel grunted. “Anyway, I think I’ve found your answer. See here—” she had folded the paper open and pointed to an article in the Food & Leisure section, “I thought I remembered reading about this.”

_La Maison Belle Hires Bear Chef,_ read the headline. Joel blinked at it, blinked again, and grudgingly kept reading. It continued: _Montreal’s newest up-and-coming French bistro made the surprising choice last week of selecting and Alaska Black Bear to head up their kitchen. The bear, who has asked to be known only as “Chef,” trained at the Canadian Culinary Institute before holding down a range of sous-chef jobs at lesser kitchens. Her Coq o Vin has been hailed as “inspired” and her Quiche Briton as “a revelation.” Chef has lived in the city of Montreal for over five years and is known to enjoy the theater, modern art, and of course the vast variety of culinary experiences the city has to offer. While some questions have been raised about the hiring of a bear to such a high-profile position, both on the grounds of animal rights and of customer safety, Chef has assured us that she is delighted to have received this position, and that she has never attacked a customer, even the very rude ones._

Joel snapped the paper shut, “This is ridiculous. Is this,” he glanced at the front page, “okay well it’s not actually an April Fools addition but this can’t be real. It’s _absurd._ Hiring a _bear_ in a restaurant. Not even in Alaska, and you expect me to believe this is Montreal? This is utter nonsense” his rambling faded into disgruntled mutter as Ruth-Anne spoke over him.

“Now Joel, I suppose if you never met a bear-chef in New York it might be hard to contemplate. But think of the dreams you were telling me about. You dreamed about a kitchen, a very nice one; you said they spoke French. Joel, you said you were cooking with hairy paws. Doesn’t that sound just like this Chef to you?”

“No--no, Ruth-Anne, it doesn’t sound _exactly_ like this. it sounds. It sounds insane.” Joel felt himself falter. It did, in fact, sound and awful lot like the dreams he had been experiencing. “and anyway, what does it matter if it does? Maybe I read this article once, or, or…”

“Or maybe Chef is your visitor, Joel. Didn’t you say she went for your fancy, imported food first? The things you can’t get in Cicely but you could get someplace like…Montreal?”

Joel spluttered, blaming his sleep-deprivation for the fact that this made even a little since. “Okay, I can’t believe I’m even asking this but. This bear lives in _Montreal,_ right? She’s got a restaurant. Why would she possibly be breaking into my cabin in Cicely?”

Ruth-Anne’s face fell a little at that, as she admitted, “I’ve been wondering the same thing, Joel. I’ve been through all the issues of the _Gazette_ for the last four years, but apart from the occasional good review in the food section there’s no more information to be found about Chef. It could be she left, came back to her home.”

“ _Could_ be?” Joel started gathering his supplies and change from the counter, “could… I can’t believe we’re even taking about this. I don’t need fairy-stories Ruth-Anne, I just need my house back!”

Over the next few days, the story of the bear, Chef, spread through Cicely like wildfire. Joel wasn’t even that surprised by the way news worked anymore, although he might have admitted a little shock over the number of people who asked him if he would ask his “guest” to cater their dinner parties.

The second snow fell, a real snow that coated the streets in more than nine inches of white powder and reminded Joel vividly that he didn’t have access to his winter coat, his best long underwear, or even his snowsuit. He had passed several sleepless nights shivering on the exam table, wrapped in all the clothes people had lent him, even giving in and wearing the fleece hat Shelly had given him which had little bear ears and a scarf that could also turn into mittens stitched to look like little paws. Joel hated the garment on principle, and when he finally woke up thrashing from yet another kitchen dream to find that he had ripped the hat off and it was now sitting beside his head and looking straight at him with its flat button eyes, he snapped. 

He stomped into the Brick and, taking advantage of Holling’s temporary absence, persuaded Dave to hand over the ancient shotgun they kept in the back room. A he stood in the door, ready to go on his mission, he spun around and faced the rows of staring eyes and worries whispers.

“It’s _my_ house” he proclaimed, like Henry V in snow mittens, “and I’m taking it back.” There was a rumble of voices, mostly unhappy, but Joel shouted over them, “No! it’s not your house, any of yours. It’s _mine._ I’m not going to be held hostage anymore, not by a bear or a wolverine or even a chef.”

“Will you actually shoot them?” someone shouted from the back of the room.

“If I must,” Joel lifted his head, trying to override the sick feeling that twisted in his stomach with more righteous anger. “I will do what I have to.”

“Even the cubs?” Someone else asked. The sick twist in Joel’s stomach got worse, but he wasn’t going to back down now. Without answering, he turned away and walked out the doors.

By the time Joel drove down the dirt rack to his cabin, his hands were shaking on the wheel. _Not fear,_ he told himself, _not guilt. Just…anticipation._ This was a lie, and he knew it: he was terrified. But when he thought of spending one more night in the office, he strengthened his resolve and stepped out of the truck, gun in his hands.

The cabin was completely empty. One window, screen, glass, and all, was completely ripped out of the way. Other than that, things looked…well, almost normal. There were a few empty wrappers scattered on the counters or on the floor, and the door of one cabinet has been torn off its hinges. But other than that, every drawer had been shut, and it looked like someone had even made an attempt to clean off the counter. Joel blinked. He checked the bedroom, the bathroom, found no signs of disturbance at all. Part of him had expected the bears to have taken over completely, to have made a nest or…whatever you called it...out of his heavy blankets and terrycloth bathrobes. But the cabin looked, if anything, cleaner than it had the last time he had slept there.

At this point completely wrong-footed, Joel stepped out onto the steps and looked towards the forest. There! Even in the fresh snow, he could see the tracks, giant clawed pawprints—so he wasn’t crazy! They had been here, and recently. Tightening his jaw and strengthening his resolve, Joel slung the rifle over his shoulder and followed the tracks.

After what felt like hours, Joel was deep into the forest and kept losing sight of where the tracks were. Sometimes one of the cubs would wander off from them mother and Joel would follow the smaller footprints in circles until they finally made their way back to the main trail, barely feet ahead from where they had left it. When he reached a fallen tree, Joel let himself sit down and rest. Just for a moment, just to rest his eyes. He was so tired…

_When Joel opened his eyes, the mother bear was sitting on the log beside him, gently combing the snow out of his hair with her claws. Joel jerked his head away, fast, almost falling off the log. The bear raised her enormous paws in a gesture almost of surrender._

_“It’s alright,” she said, in her deep, rumbling voice, “I’m not going to hurt you. The thought of it!” Joel blinked. It was the voice from his dreams. “if you stay out here much longer, you’ll freeze.”_

_“I’m—” Joel stumbled over his words, vaguely aware that he was angry over something but struggling to hang on to the slippery thought of exactly what it was. “my home. I can’t go home, there are bears there!”_

_The bear laughed, a laugh that seemed to shake the forest like the shifting to tectonic plates. “I must apologize for that. You see, I was simply desperate for some chocolate. For, well, anything that didn’t taste of dirt, if I’m honest. We did clean up afterward.”_

_“You—” Joel opened his mouth a few times, choking on the words, “you broke into my house. My_ house. _To eat my...chocolate?”_

_“Not my finest moment,” the bear, to her credit, did look a little ashamed under all that fur, “but I just...you know that feeling that you’d just about die for a proper pizza. Or some fresh fruit.”_

_“Oh yeah,” Joel nodded, the dream fog shifting and thinning as he got onto a familiar theme, “or a bagel. Damn, it’s been so long since I’ve had a real bagel. And what about—what about a knish? I would die some days for a kasha knish from Zabar’s.”_

_The bear smiled, showing far too many teeth for Joel’s liking, and laid a heavy paw on his shoulder. “And croissants,” she sighed, “medium-rare steaks, a good brandy. I thought you would understand. The only man in this town who gets his chocolate flown in from Fairbanks. I’m Chef, by the way.”_

_“J-Joel Fleishman,” Joel reached out a hand, which was enveloped in Chef’s much larger one before he could think better of it. Her grip was strangely gentle._

_“I must assure you, Joel Fleischman, that your house is quite safe now,” Chef continued, “I mean of course, we would never have hurt you, even the first time. Does one eat the delivery man when one orders takeout? But that aside, as I’ve said, it was a moment of weakness to break through your window without asking permission first. It was just…I heard that young pilot complaining about your food delivery. And then, well, once I knew what you had in your house. And the cravings, Joel, especially after along night when the cubs have been up playing and roughhousing and all I’ve had is some berries and a few birds. Uncooked, I might add...Well, Joel, you understand, I’m sure.”_

_“Ummm” said Joel, thinking of how he would feel if he saw one of his neighbors taking a delivery of real, New York bagels. “I suppose so.”_

_“See,” Chef nodded to herself, “a kindred spirit. I’m sorry we didn’t speak about this earlier, Joel. We could have avoided so much confusion. And you stomping around with that ridiculous gun…You didn’t really intend to shoot us, did you?”_

_“No…” Joel admitted. Now that he was face to face with Chef the very thought embarrassed hm slightly, “I just…it just seemed like the thing to do. You know, around here.”_

_“Alaskans,” Chef shook her head and sighed fondly, “I have missed them in some ways. In some…less.”_

_“About that,” Joel cleared his throat, weary of upsetting even the most polite of bears but at this point terribly curious, “didn’t you like in Montreal? I mean, it’s not New York but it’s a city, a proper one. You could have all the chocolate you want there.”_

_“Ah,” Chef turned her head to look deeper into the woods, and Joel noticed for the first time the shapes of the two cubs, tussling in the brush. “It’s different when you have kids,” rumbled Chef, “you’ll see, one day. You have to worry about what kind of influences they’re getting, what kind of upbringing. I wanted my cubs to have the same kind of childhood I did, to be connected to nature, to their home. I_ chose _to live in Montreal, you know. And while I would make that choice again in a minute, just for myself, I think it’s important for children to know their roots. After all, when all is said and done, we are bears. I thought it was important for the children to have the same positive experiences growing up that I did—swimming in streams, catching their own food. There’s nothing like the crunch of bone between your teeth when you’re a young thing”_

_Joel shuddered, but tried to nod encouragingly._

_“And it was a good choice, Joel Fleishman, it really was. It’s just…sometimes I miss it all so much. The smell of exhaust in the air and being woken up at 2am by kids setting a car on fire. Rock concerts and evenings at the opera. And the food, oh, the food…but ah well. We’ve made decisions and we must stick to them, mustn’t we Joel? Even if it means giving up the things we love.” Chef sighed again, gazing at her kids with a mix of sorrow and deep affection. “this all to say, of course, that we shan’t be troubling you again. I only came back at all try to fix the cabinets. I would ask you to bill me for the damage but,” she shrugged._

_“Th-thank you.” Joel said, feeling like it was really the only thing to say at the moment. He started again, “And I’m sorry. Don’t you want—"_

_“Sssshhh,” Chef said, setting her heavy paw on his head again, “you’re about to wake up. Goodbye, Joel.”_

With a start, Joel awoke in his bed. His own bed, not in the office. Someone had stripped off his wet jacket and roughly tucked him in. He lay still for a long time, staring at the ceiling and trying to catch his breath.

The next day, he got on the phone to the shop in Fairbanks, ordered the best bagels to be found within a 500-mile radius, a variety of the freshest fruit possible, and a dozen bars of dark chocolate. He ignored Maggie’s teasing when she handed over the box or goods and told everyone at The Brick that “the problem had been dealt with,” making sure to return the gun and proudly say that, thanks to his superior wits, he hadn’t even needed to use it.

He pulled out a basket his mother had once sent him, dumped out the socks it usually held, and filled it with the assortment of gourmet foods he had bought. The tracks had long since disappeared but he followed the path through the snow until he found someplace that looked perhaps, like the fallen log when he had talked with Chef. He left the basket there with a simple note, “ _To a kindred spirit,”_ and walked home smiling.   
  


**Author's Note:**

> This story was truly a delight to write. I've been casually working on the outline for the last month and a half and every time I picked it up I smiled. I also I went to re-watch the show in preparation for writing this, but in fact my family own one DVD set which is spilt between all of us. For example, i have seasons 2, 5, and 6. My grandfather has 4 and strangely also 5. My cousin has a second copy of 2 and also3. None of us know where season1 in. This to say, the re-watch has been a delight. I loved being able to immerse myself in this world. I really hope you have enjoyed this little bit of silly sweetness.


End file.
